Start-up stories

Conversation with the Cowley's

We have an exciting end to series 4 of the Invested Investor podcasts. This week we are proud to have our founders Peter and Alan Cowley talking about their experience running the Invested Investor. A unique and open conversation between father and son reveals what their key motives are for setting up the Invested Investor, as well as the key successes and failures of the business. Interestingly, they highlight the biggest learnings from all the podcasts they have recorded.

The millennial angel investor

Reece Chowdhry, the dynamic founder of RLC Ventures joins us this week. Reece has been investing since the age of 13 and now has over 40 investments to his name. In this podcast, we hear how Reece started life at EY, before setting up RLC Ventures in 2015. At 30, Reece is a relatively young yet very well established investor. Don’t let his age fool you, he is extremely experienced but still willing to learn. His approach to investing includes looking for companies with a presence in emerging markets and offsetting a percentage of any carry from RLC Ventures to charities that the founders support.

Build your appetite for risk

Zoe Peden, investor and award-winning educational technology entrepreneur joins us to talk about her journey. Founder of FutureWorldVC and MyChoicePad, a language development product has made a lasting impact on the lives of people with learning disabilities.  Zoe began her career in the charity sector, she describes life as an entrepreneur seeking funding, balancing the ups and downs and living off pure determination and creative talent.

Passing on wisdom and legacy

Joel Solomon joins us this week, he is the founding partner of Renewal Funds, the Canadian based mission venture capital firm and author of “The Clean Money Revolution”. Joel explains why he decided to become an investor and strategist for social and cultural change, as well as how his principles were cemented during his early career. He takes us back to his first job in politics through to his current position. Joel explains why and how he supports businesses so they can be part of the solution, making the new sectors of environmental technology and climate change matter. This is a compelling podcast, it’s sound quality is not up to our usual standard, due to the method of recording.

For the greater good of society

Simon Bond is the innovation director for Set-Squared, a partnership of universities that support early stage technology companies helping them to raise investment. He is an experienced Director of business incubation, university enterprise & research commercialisation, he specialises in business development strategies for innovation-intensive companies. Simon discusses his background and explains how he always believed he was destined for the business world, after founding a TV station with angel money in the early 1990’s.  We learn about his journey as Simon talks us through the thrill of founding, scaling and successfully exiting, and how those early lessons never left him.